


Arrow

by PlayingTheGameOfThrones



Series: Marked [1]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Kraglin is a romantic at heart, Nebula being dramatic as usual, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, some angst with a healthy dose of fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2017-08-24
Packaged: 2018-11-30 13:40:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11464746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlayingTheGameOfThrones/pseuds/PlayingTheGameOfThrones
Summary: Nebula doesn't believe in soulmates.





	1. Chapter 1

Nebula doesn’t believe in soulmates.

Gamora did, of course. Unlike Nebula, she’d been born with a Soul Mark, a red star etched in the green flesh of her inner wrist. As girls, in quieter moments, Gamora would muse about who her soulmate might be, what he might be doing. Nebula had no time for such sentiment. She had been born with unsullied blue skin on both wrists. She had no soulmate.

That was just fine with her. Nebula cared only about surviving from day to day, surviving the myriad alterations her father had made to her body, surviving the violence Gamora subjected her to day in and day out. Nebula had no time for romance.

Gamora had mooned over that damned Mark, distracting both herself and Nebula from what they had been chosen by their father to do: survive to the next day, and best your sister in combat. Despite all Gamora’s mooning, Nebula had never bested her sister in combat. Or in anything else.

No, Nebula doesn’t believe in soulmates. Not even after the Battle of Xandar, when the soft blue skin on the crease between her palm and her forearm – one of the only places Thanos had not touched, had not destroyed – began to burn.

Nebula knew what that meant.

Thanos had taught her, should her wrist ever begin to burn, to chop her own arm off. He could have done it himself; he already had with her other arm, ripping it from her socket and replacing it with metal after Gamora had tossed her from a cliff. He could have replaced both arms with machinery. He could have eliminated the risk. But that would have been too easy. Even that wasn’t cruel enough for her father. No, Nebula had to do it herself. Had to rip even the possibility of love from her body with her bare hands. That’s what Thanos had done with his own Mark, after all. Why should his daughter be any different?

Thanos had chosen Nebula because she didn’t have a Mark. He had chosen Gamora despite her Mark. _Gamora is strong enough to persevere in spite of love. It is lucky Nebula was born without love. She is not as strong as her sister,_ he was fond of reminding them.

Nebula doesn’t believe in soulmates. But she doesn’t believe in Thanos either.

That is why, when the blue skin on her wrist begins to burn and shift into the shape of an arrow, she lets it.

 ***

In spite of himself, Kraglin Obfonteri, First Mate of Yondu Udonta’s exiled Ravager clan, believes in soulmates.

 _Sentiment_ , the Captain called it whenever he would catch Pete glancing at the sword Mark imprinted on his wrist. But in all his years with the Captain, Kraglin had caught brief glimpses of the Captain’s own mark: a white flower, a flower Pete identified as a Terran river lily, imprinted on his blue wrist. The one time Kraglin and Peter had asked Cap about his Mark – they must have been about nine and fifteen, young enough to ask stupid questions – he had snapped gruffly that she was dead, and not to ask again.

Kraglin’s mother had taught him about the Marks before she had died. He hadn’t been born with a Mark, but his mother assured him not to worry. _A sweet boy like you? It’ll show up eventually._

And it had.

A small outstretched hand, dark blue, appeared on his wrist the day after the Battle of Xandar. His mother had taught him not to ponder over the Mark, should it ever appear, or try to find the person the Mark matched. _They will find you only if you don’t look for them_. So Kraglin had done his best to forget the Mark.

Until the day of the mutiny. Until the day the woman who shot his captain came to him and demanded he give her a hand from their collection.


	2. Chapter 2

Nebula hadn’t thought too long on the red arrow on her wrist. She wondered briefly if it was that Ravager captain, the Centaurian with the yaka arrow. She thought she might ask Peter Quill, the fool Gamora was Marked for, who saw the captain as a sort of father, what Mark the Centaurian had. _Why would he want a cyborg who shot off his fin and turned his crew against him?_ So she had never asked. And then the Ravager captain had died, and it was too late to ask.

Her destiny lay with Thanos and his demise. Not with whoever this Mark was supposed to represent, whether alive or dead. But somehow, something stops her just before leaving the Quadrant to hunt down her father. Some remnant of the girl she had been before her father ripped it out of her piece by piece, maybe. Some semblance of the person she used to be but can no longer remember goes to Gamora before she leaves to hunt their father down like a dog. Nebula goes in search of her sister.

She finds her standing beside the fool who calls himself Star-Lord, the son of the Ravager captain, gazing at the fading of the last fireworks.

“Gamora,” Nebula shouts. She sees her sister whisper something in Quill’s ear before turning to face her.

“I thought you left,” Gamora says.

Nebula sneers. “Not yet. But soon.”

Gamora leads her sister away from the others, deeper into the ship. She crosses her arms and gazes at Nebula. “What do you want?” she snaps.

Nebula raises her eyebrows.

Gamora shakes her head and lets her arms return to her sides. “Sorry. Force of habit.”

Nebula tugs the sleeve of her Ravager garb up, baring the Mark. “It showed up after Xandar.”

Gamora reaches out a hand but stops herself just before touching the blue woman. “May I?”

Nebula’s first instinct is to snarl and jerk away. But she bites back her desire to lash out, and places her wrist in Gamora’s outstretched hand.

“Does it still hurt?” Gamora asks, her fingers ghosting over the arrow, pulsing bright red against the blue of Nebula’s wrist.

Nebula shakes her head. “Not anymore.”

Gamora lightly traces her fingertips over the Mark, and Nebula shudders. She is not used to gentleness. Gamora looks up from her sister’s wrist and meets her eyes, a small smile tugging at her lips. “I told you so.”

Nebula growls and rips her sleeve back over the Mark. “I knew it was a mistake coming to you.” She turns her back on her sister and begins to stomp away, cursing herself for having been so weak, so stupid. Her sister had never understood when they were children. Why would she understand now?

“Wait.” Gamora grasps Nebula’s arm. “I’m sorry.”

Nebula grudgingly turns back.

“Do you know who the Mark represents?”

“I thought maybe the Ravager captain, your Marked’s father.”

Gamora shakes her head. “No. Peter told me Udonta’s Marked was dead.”

Nebula nods, a sardonic smile on her face. “I should have known. I am not a person. I am a machine. A weapon. Things like me are not meant to be loved.”

“Nebula,” Gamora says, stopping her sister before she can launch into one of her tirades. “Thanos was wrong.” Gamora gathers Nebula’s hands in her own. “About everything.”

“Hey.” Quill pops up next to Gamora and places a protective arm around her shoulders, his instinct still to protect his Marked from her sister. “What’s going on here?”

Gamora sighs. “Nebula’s Mark finally showed up and she’s trying to figure out who it symbolizes.”

Quill’s face lights up and Nebula resists the urge to roll her eyes. “That’s awesome! What’s the Mark?”

Gamora’s gaze flits to her sister, as if asking for permission. Nebula groans but nods in spite of herself. “It’s an arrow,” Gamora explains. “A red arrow. Nebula thought it might have been for Yondu, but…”

A smile breaks out across Quill’s face, eyes glinting. “No, not Yondu. _Kraglin_.”

“Kraglin? His first mate?”

“Yeah, Rocket fixed up the arrow and I gave it to him.”

But Nebula isn’t listening anymore. She leaves her sister and Quill standing there, and sets off through the halls of the Quadrant to find her Marked.


	3. Chapter 3

Kraglin can't bring himself to move.

He knows the funeral is over. The last of the fireworks and even Yondu's remains have long since faded into the cold vacuum of space. But something inside Kraglin Obfonteri keeps him staring out the window of his quarters. He isn't sure what he's waiting for, or if he's even waiting for anything. With his captain gone, the man who had plucked him as an orphan from the rough Xandarian streets, Kraglin feels like he's drifting through space, untethered from everyone and everything. He knows he hasn't been launched from the ship to freeze to death in the cold emptiness of space like his friends had been, but somebody had neglected to tell his heart that.

Finally he turns his back and retreats to his small bed. As First Mate, Kraglin is one of the only Ravagers on Yondu's crew to have his own quarters. He's never been so grateful for the solitude as he is at this moment, clutching his captain's fixed arrow to his chest and letting a few quiet tears slide down his face. Not that there's anyone left of the crew to give him shit for it. And no captain to protect him if they did.

"Kraglin!" he hears Peter yell from down the hall. "Kraglin! I found your Marked!" Peter pokes his head into Kraglin's quarters, and Kraglin furiously scrubs away his tears. "You're never gonna believe who it is."

Kraglin sighs. "It's Nebula. I know."

Peter deflates like a balloon. "Oh. I was hoping I could surprise you."

Kraglin shrugs and sets the arrow back down on the bed beside him. "I've only known for a few days."

Peter steps inside and shuts the door behind him. "Why aren't you more excited? You didn't even _have_ a Mark the last time I saw you."

"The cap'n just died, Pete. I don't have time to think about–"

"Obfonteri!"

Suddenly Peter is on the ground, struggling to catch his breath with Nebula's booted foot pinning him to the floor. She removes her foot from Peter's chest and holds her wrist up, letting Kraglin see the red arrow imprinted in the skin here.

"Quill says you're my Marked."

"Why did you have to pin me to the floor?"

"Get out, Quill."

Peter opens his mouth as if to protest, but Nebula's glare makes him change his mind. He slinks out the door, muttering something that sounds suspiciously like "Can't believe I'm 34 and still getting my ass kicked by blue assholes." Nebula ignores him, and turns her eyes back to Kraglin.

"Um," Kraglin says. He clears his throat. "Did yours show up after Xandar too?" That had been a strange week for Kraglin. He hadn't been back to his home planet since his mother died, and then her last promise to him had finally come true after 28 years. He wonders if it had been just as strange for Nebula.

"Yes." A silence. "Can I see yours?"

Kraglin hesitates, but rolls up the red sleeve of his Ravager uniform, the same sort Nebula also wears. "It's a hand. A blue hand."

Nebula takes a tiny step toward Kraglin. She pauses just before touching the smaller version of her hand.

"You can touch me," Kraglin blurts out, and Nebula's dark eyes flit up to meet his. "If you want. You don't have to."

Nebula nods. She wants to touch him. She wants to trace the fingers of his Mark with her own fingers, wants to run her hand through his spiked hair, wants him to touch her too. But something stops her. A whisper in the back of her head warning her about this very thing. A whisper in her father's voice.

As if he knows, as if he hears the voice too, Kraglin softly takes her hand in his, and traces her fingers over his Mark. They both shudder, and don't bother hiding it.

"I want to kiss you," Nebula says.

Kraglin drops her hand and smiles a little. "Me too."

Softly, slowly, he presses his lips to hers.


End file.
